


restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

by toujours_nigel



Series: Conditions Best Suited [2]
Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-20 00:14:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2408099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ralph and Alec are introduced by a common acquaintance. Ralph's already met Alec under false pretences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aureliano_B](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aureliano_B/gifts).



> for Amrita Chatterjee, who adores this couple. ♥

It was quite the worst thing after all, to take on in a passenger ship, especially one of these floating hotel sorts of things, where they expected ships’ officers to play host to every ditzy socialite who got a fancy for a midnight stroll in high gales, or took to being violently seasick in glassy waters. The women were alright, they’d more practice being slightly unsteady on their feet and steered well clear of him in any case, some instinct warning them off that Ralph didn’t much want to think about but took cheerful and shameless advantage of. Two years less a fortnight of that particular poison had been quite plenty. The young men, though, were always a sorry lot and had been worse than usual coming home. They’d lodged in comfort in Brooklyn after decanting their last group—which had yielded him three tough-as-nails dowagers and the conviction that he never again wanted to sign up on a passenger ship—and Ralph had returned to the familiar berth feeling quite at ease with life and what it had to offer: what it had had to offer just recently had been a cocky young wharf-rat of recent Irish extraction, both satisfactorily easy to get around and extremely eager when properly persuaded. Dear James, pity one couldn’t make any sort of regular arrangement.

It hadn’t taken more than a day for the horrors of transporting the English aristocracy to befall him in one fell swoop. Friends of the owner, Captain Hall had said, take care of them, they won’t be any trouble at all, they’re the Wimseys, you know. Ralph had agreed in rather a star-struck fashion, more fool him. His lordship and my lady had been no trouble in truth, being good sorts, who kept to themselves and were rather sickeningly besotted with each other and the little boy; but the nephew, Lord, who had no call to act so very infuriatingly young since he couldn’t be any younger than Ralph himself, and was probably rather older, had battened on Ralph and reduced him nearly to the extremities of calling upon divine guidance to be rid of him. The worst of it was that he wasn’t slightly inclined the other way, or it mightn’t have been a total loss. As things stood, though, Ralph was going to stow his things, find Tommy Larssen, and stove his head in for convincing him to sign on in his place: Rosie Larssen could very well have coped with having a baby without her husband hovering uselessly, she had twice already.

 

Some time later, replete with good company, violence, and the relief of ranting about posh white-headed boys who were too pretty for their own good and too inquisitive ditto, he walked out into the salt air feeling desultorily guilty about harbouring ill-will towards Rosie, who really was a good sort for a woman, and had had the loveliest little girl ever born. Ralph was captivated, quite a slave already to her downy cheeks, and pansy eyes, and the bright spark of determination that dominated the uncoordinated movements. Somewhere about the place had to be the sort of shop where one could buy clothes for an infant, bound to be, unless all such accoutrements were provided for by doting aunts and grandmothers which on balance seemed unlikely at the least. Perhaps his purse might even stretch to a doll or two. Luncheon first, though: he didn’t drink at sea much beyond the glass of wine at dinner with passengers, and Tommy mixed stiff doubles.

The _Rose_ proclaimed its allegiances on the faded sign, and looked like it might easily go back the five hundred odd years. The first time he’d come in here was, Lord, a good three years ago; he hadn’t got the promised ship, and had had to wander the streets of Southampton a good few months before something better had come his way. Coming back into port after that voyage he had looked about himself very furtively and made it harder than usual for men to approach him, even for simple friendship. It hadn’t done him much good, but he had been content enough to have it deal him no further harm. From the height of twenty-three he thought of himself at twenty as a cautious beggar, grandly dismissing the pain that had ringed him around; he had scorned to journal those humiliations, and really it was easier to forget certain experiences. For now, the _Rose_ stocked Bass in quantities and their cook was both good and generous. It was enough. It was even good to be back in England. He always missed the place more than he thought he ought, in strange places where they spoke strange languages or worse yet English with a butchering twang. In a week he would tire of it and scorn his joy of the moment, but pubs like this, that sprouted like mushrooms from the wharf-sides and had each a thick brew of sailing gossip, had seen him toil from boy to man that long terrible summer; if he hated the way homesickness eased in him on ducking through the door, he yet could hardly deny it. Home is the sailor.

Someone called, “Isn’t that Ralph Lanyon? It is, well, it is, Wilson, never you fear. Lanyon, _Lanyard_ , oi!”

It was a well-bred voice, too posh to be comfortable in a place like the _Rose_ , and Ralph found himself stiffening in defensive irritation even before the words made their meaning known. It had been some time, since anyone had called him Lanyard. There, the big man shouldering his way up to the bar.

“Fitzroy,” he said, rather blankly, and then, climbing off the stool, “Hal, Lord, it’s been _years_.”

“Unconscionably long,” Hal said, and folded him up in his arms for an instant before holding him again at arms’ length. “Well, come sit with us and tell us all about it.”

Impossible to deny him. Even had he wanted to Ralph wasn’t sure he could have: the habit of obedience was in too deep, seated longer than his twenty-odd years of conscious life. “If you’re sure it’s alright,” he demurred, and followed meekly.

Hal’s friends looked exasperated, but also rather like they were used to this sort of thing. Probably they were, Hal even as a schoolboy had been the riotous sort who could locate an acquaintance within five minutes of turning up anywhere. Now, having been turned loose on the unsuspecting earth for some years, doubtless he had friends in Boston and Bombay alike, without Ralph’s own excuse of life at sea.

“This is Ralph Lanyon,” Hal said, handily pushing Ralph into the only empty chair, “I’ve known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper, lost sight of him the last few years, his father’s our GP, well you’ve met him, Alec. Ralph, this is Edward Wilson, he’s the reason we’ve met today, we’re representing his firm and apparently it wouldn’t do unless someone came and peered at his great blasted ships and I’m the poor bastard who’s drawn the short straw. And this is Alec Deacon, Dickie’s marrying his sister in September, he’s spending the long holidays with me.”

Deacon. So he’d given his right name after all, nasty little mess Hal’s dragged him into. “Dickie’s getting married? Wish him very happy.”

“Come home and do it yourself,” Hal retorted. “Damn fool boy. Well, alright, I shan’t tease. ’Twas a bad business. Well, Dickie, yes. They’ve had as short an engagement as the parents would stand for, Dickie’d have run off to the registry office the morning after, if he could, and I can’t say I blame him. Letty’s not the sort a man keeps waiting. Oh, you needn’t blush, Alec, ’tis no more than the truth. Going, then, Wilson? Yes, I’ll be with you directly Hanson gets done with the papers, oh say four, say four, no later than that, surely. Well, he’s the sense God gave a goat, at least, to know where he’s not wanted. Now, children, talk amongst yourselves while I order lunch, peace Ralph, I’ve known what you like eating since you were five. Stay.”

Deacon’s mobile, sensitive face, lifted to the light, was flushed with anger. “Ralph Lanyon, is it? I thought it was Abel Ross.”

“Was it? I can’t remember, pseudonyms weren’t occupying a significant portion of my mind just then. Though I’ve something of a right to use Ross.”

“You _lied_ to me.” Lord, how young was he? Not nearly enough to be naive about this sort of thing.

“You ought to learn doing the same yourself,” Ralph reproved. “Anyone would think you _wanted_ to be black-mailed, my dear.”

“It’s beyond me how you can presume to lecture,” Deacon hissed, which was at least better than the alternatives. “I’ve met your father, do you know?”

“Have you? How’s the old man, haven’t met him myself in years.”

“You could come home and find out for yourself,” Hal said, dropping heavily into his chair. “I’ve told them to get us the rarebit; man at the counter assured me it would be good. Well, they’re business-like here, aren’t they?”

Ralph, rapidly looking over the conversation, was sure everything incriminating had been said at too low a volume for Hal to have heard it over the white noise of conversation about them. It might matter for Deacon.

“Hal’s used to people kowtowing and tugging their forelocks when he passes,” he informed Deacon and sat back to watch Hal purple.

No luck. Hal measured Deacon with a summarising glance and said, quite conspiratorially, “Ralph likes to pretend he’s one of the proletariat.”

“Hal used to let the porter, who had passed his three score and ten, load and unload his school trunk alone and disdained to assist.”

“Ralph thinks he’s a socialist, but he’s the greatest snob that ever lived.”

“Hal doesn’t realise he’s going to be first against the wall when the revolution comes.”

“Ralph, old man, surely not first. There’s Dickie, and well, my father’s still around. I’m only the second son.”

“Aristo scum.”

“Red ragger.”

“Oh, look,” Alec said brightly, “the food’s here.” He looked easier now, on the verge of laughter, and something eased strangely in Ralph to see it. He had never spoken to Hal and intended it primarily as a performance for someone else, even when he was a child and worshipped the ground Dickie trod on: none of the others had ever even been considered. He was unwilling to let it take on meaning.

“Well, it’s better than I’d expected,” Hal opined at length.

“They have good grub here,” Ralph volunteered, dedicatedly working his way through the meal. “Whatever you do, don’t try the _Saracen_ , bloody inedible slop.” He looked up and flushed horribly under Hal’s too-kind gaze. Sloppy, Lanyon, terribly sloppy.

Hal only said, very mildly, “I’ll remember that. Now, my lads, I’ve got to go into work again. No, stay, you’ll be bored out of your skull. Ralph can take you around, can’t you?”

“I’m at loose ends today,” Ralph said, determined not to glance at Alec. “I’m not entirely sure there’s very much to see here that’ll prove of interest.”

“Then tell him stories. Alec likes stories, great reader. Well, I’ve settled the bill, don’t hurry away, but I’ve got to bolt or old Hanson’ll be after my blood. Alec, you know the way back to the hotel, or, well, Ralph can get you back. Be good, mes enfants.”

 

When the conversation had swirled back into the gap left in Hal’s splendid train, Alec said, very correctly, “Please don’t feel obliged to keep me company.”

Ralph smiled, ate the last bite of his lunch, and said, “I’ve lodgings quite close by, will you come up?”

Alec blinked a little myopically. “You’re rather blunt.”

“I shan’t say come only to talk, but if you want, even only that. This isn’t a fit place for conversation, my dear.”

Alec said, graceless as a child, “Will you lie to me again? Only I don’t see what good it’d do you now.”

“Perhaps I can’t help it,” Ralph parried, “like kleptomaniacs and stealing. No, no more lies, honour bright.”

Alec got up with the beauty of movement Ralph remembered from their last encounter, nothing showy but clearly aware of making an impression. For a moment he stood eyeing Ralph with clear suspicion, before grinning suddenly and brightly. “Well, lead on, I’ve nothing else to do.”

Well, Ralph thought, quite clearly and quite irrelevantly, here’s luck.

 

Alec came into the bookstore behind him, and leaned familiarly close in the shelter of the stacks. His fine, dark hair, worn a little overlong, brushed Ralph’s collar, when he turned. It reminded one of something that it ought not.

Irritable and unhappy with himself for it, Ralph said, “"Get out of the light: d'you mind?"

Alec straightened abruptly, compensating by leaning away. "Sorry." He didn’t look it in the least, Ralph was relieved to note.

"I'm just looking for something. Oh, yes, here it is."

“Who do you know,” asked Alec, plucking the volume from his hands, “who reads Harriet Vane?”

Ralph examined himself surreptitiously for the desire to pass it off as a gift. With almost anyone else he would have, and plausible lies were crowding his throat even as he looked at Alec and the silence grew expectant. But he had rather shot his bolt already as far as blatant lies were concerned; Alec would be on the look-out for more now, and Ralph felt a strange reluctance to live down to expectations created by Abel Ross, pure imagination though he was.

“I read them,” he said, and saw that he’d answered correctly. Encouraged by Alec’s smile, he vouchsafed a few details about his mother’s reading habits and the subsequent alteration wrought in them by Miss Vane’s notorious trial. “So I haven’t got my hands on any in what is it now, seven years. I’d forgotten I rather used to like them, but she was one of my passengers just now. So you see...”

Alec looked at him, his smile dimmed. "I see," he said slowly. "Oh, God, yes, now I see everything."

"I don't know what you mean." He was beginning to have his doubts, but there would be nothing left but ashes of the evening stretching out delectably ahead of them, if once they got into that. Alec had said last time that he was a doctor, please Lord not a shrink of some description. Ralph didn’t think he could bear to be analysed.

"It doesn't matter," said Alec. "Let it go. Whereabouts are your rooms?”

 

Presently Alec said, “What’s the time?”

Ralph, who had been examining the easy way Alec’s skin bruised, looked away with some difficulty from the purpling shape of his own hand on Alec’s hip. It would be tender some time yet. Perhaps he oughtn’t have gripped so tight. “Haven’t the slightest, my watch is beside your head. Did I hurt you?”

“Going on six,” Alec announced after a frantic bit of searching, and laid his free hand on Ralph’s head. “Is that what’s worrying you?”

“One doesn’t want to be a beast.” He raised his head a fraction of an inch, and butted against Alec’s hand. “Don’t laugh.”

“I can hardly help it,” Alec retorted, and tugged at his hair in retaliation. “No, don’t bite; I thought one didn’t want to be a beast. It’s such a quaint way of putting it; you sound like a school-master.”

“ _Did_ I hurt you?” He rather thought he might have done last time, but they hadn’t lingered, and indeed Ralph himself had slunk from the room before Alec had done much but drop bonelessly into the sheets. Something of the same anxiety was coursing through him now, but Alec’s hand cupping the shape of his skull felt the heaviest anchor imaginable.

“You did nothing I didn’t want,” Alec said, and he had perforce to be content with that. Alec himself seemed to lose what little interest he had in the matter very rapidly, looking around and plaintively demanding cigarettes.

Ralph rolled out of bed to fetch cigarettes and matches, and tossed them to Alec, taking a quick turn about the room. It was almost shamefully wonderful to walk around under the appreciative eyes of a man. Before Alec there had been a handful of women in two years, who tended to sneak glances if they looked at all, and after him only the boy in Brooklyn who had kept his eyes closed afterwards and muttered regrets or prayers that hadn’t prevented him from returning the next day. Alec looked openly, with the confident gaze of a man staring at his winnings. It made one want to preen in quite a ghastly fashion; perhaps that was why women did it.

“You might as well ask,” he said after a moment, when it became evident that Alec’s smugness would linger despite any awkward silences Ralph might attempt to project.

Alec leaned out to stub the cigarette on the window-frame and coiled back neatly, dropping the stub in the cigarette pack in lieu of an ashtray. “Why _did_ you lie to me? The truth this time.”

“Because you wanted me to,” Ralph said. “I know your lot, you wanted the thrill of slumming and picking up a bit of rent, and then you were gratified it didn’t need paying. Sort of story you can dine on in certain quarters.”

He deserved whipping for that. Alec held very still, and in the dappled light of the streetlamp his face was in shadow, inscrutable. In a moment he said, coolly, “Are you actually trying to argue altruism?”

“Never fear. I,” he paused for a moment on the edge of honesty, truly afraid for the first time in several years. “I wanted you.”

Alec looked away. A blush crept purple over his ears, the brown length of his neck, his shoulders, the length of him tangled in the sheets. “What price honesty,” he murmured, and laughed.

Ralph gave up the effort of trying to make out Alec’s face from a distance, and climbed back into bed, misjudging the distance deliberately. Alec swatted him off half-heartedly, and let Ralph turn it into a quick bit of tussling. When they’d stopped he was panting from exertion and far less inclined to duck his head.

“Ridiculous man,” he gasped, and kissed Ralph benignly on the brow.

“You must know,” Ralph said as persuasively as he could manage, “that you are beautiful.”

“You do piffle a lot,” Alec said irritably, and fought his way clear of the tangle of limbs.

Late grower, Ralph diagnosed. Probably a runty little twirp at school, unaccustomed to having his looks mentioned save by way of a joke, prides himself on his indifference to the matter which is anything but sincere. But he knew well enough that he moved well, and was easy in his skin. Late and vast growth-spurt, then, and the movement looked deliberate because it was. Ralph, compact from childhood and accustomed to his present height from age fourteen or thereabouts, felt a sudden rush of fondness towards Alec, newly reimagined as a coltish sixth-former.

“My dear,” he said, taking care to keep his voice level, “I would have crawled if you’d wanted me to. Adopting a few mannerisms was much easier on my trousers.”

He would have. He had very little time for the frills most people attached to sex, and would have nearly died rather than admitting he was a romantic, but he had seen Alec in the harsh unflattering gaslight of the _Pearl_ and it had been some moments before he could rejoin or even comprehend conversation. By then he had already made his decisions. Later he had crept away into the night before his absence could invite comment, feeling light and joyous like an antique athlete who had won the Triple Crown in the Olympics.

And now the man sat in front of him and refused to know how he was valued. Well, no matter, Ralph had time and little intention, now that he’d laid hands on him again, of letting Alec get away.

“Pass me the fags,” he said, and was careful to not grasp Alec along with the proffered cigarettes. He leaned an elbow on the window-frame and sent the smoke winding out into the sky. It had got dark while they made love and dozed and spoke. A snatch of Eliot floated into his head and he smiled out at the harbour.

Alec said in a cool, hard voice, “It’s time I got back.”

Ralph nodded, said, “You’ll find your way back? I’ll give you directions if you want.” He smoked the first cigarette down to the butt and began on another. Behind him Alec got dressed, consciously smoothed down his clothes, hopped around trying to step into his shoes, and hesitated before the door.

“Is it going to be another six months?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Ralph promised, tipping back into the sheets and staring at Alec upside-down. “Come here, then. Come and say goodbye to me."

**Author's Note:**

> Title stolen from The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock. Various lines nicked from The Charioteer and applied inappropriately.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Squires of the night's body](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2419307) by [Lilliburlero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero)




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